Japan Earthquake and Tsunami (2011)

Natural disasters in 2012 cost insurance companies about $58 billion, making it the second-most expensive year ever in the U.S., exceeded only by 2005 when hurricanes Katrina and Rita smashed into the Gulf Coast. Far and away the biggest factor in the total was storm Sandy, accounting for more than $25 billion, or 43 percent of the year's total, in insurance claims on damaged homes, cars and businesses, according to a new report released Thursday by Munich Reinsurance America Inc. Sandy made landfall Oct. 29, killing more than 110 people, flooding the coastal Northeast, blowing down houses, ripping up roads and toppling buildings in a wide swath of devastation across the Eastern...

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Earthquakes are the expression of a living planet, the earth's way of re-inventing itself. But while this knowledge may be consoling in the abstract, it's not very useful in the face of a catastrophe such as the quake and tsunami in Japan. At these times,...